SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 (Xinhua) -- "I hope I can help inspire more people to take part in creating work that combines technology and art," said Zhang Ziyi, a Chinese college girl who won Apple's 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC21) Swift Student Challenge.

Apple's WWDC21 was held from June 7 to 11 in an all-virtual format. Among a global community of developers, there were 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from 35 different countries and regions attending the event.

The winners were selected as part of Apple's annual WWDC student challenge, each demonstrating their coding and problem-solving skills by submitting an original Swift playground to earn a spot.

This is Zhang's second year participating in the WWDC Swift Student Challenge and the fourth year she has attended Today at Apple, a series of educational sessions launched by the company.

Her project "See Your Sports" is a Swift playground that combines machine learning and AR with pictures and music. Though majoring in English at college, She created the project completely by herself from what she learned at Today at Apple.

"Some people give up on playing sports because they can't see the immediate benefits. I hope to use AR and music, as well as the cooperation between two people, to enrich sports and make them even more interesting. That's why I built this AR gym," Zhang said.

She attended a virtual meetup for a dozen of Swift Student Challenge winners during the WWDC21 and shared her thoughts on the work with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

She said Tim Cook was very glad to hear she enjoyed Today at Apple and she was excited to show her Swift playground to Cook along with other outstanding students. "This makes me more determined to continue creating technology and art, stick to the things I love, and pass my passion on to others."

"One of my favorite parts of WWDC each year is meeting some of the outstanding Swift Student Challenge winners. I applaud you for all you've accomplished at a young age and I'm amazed at how you think through your passions and ideas so deeply," said Tim Cook after the virtual meeting with the student winners.

Zhang is also a member of a charity organization in China called Coding Girls, which is devoted to teaching girls to code with volunteer projects offering coding classes to local schools.

"Every year, we are inspired by the talent and ingenuity that we see from our Swift Student Challenge applicants," said Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing. "This year, we are incredibly proud that more young women applied and won than ever before."

In recent years, Chinese developers have thrived on App Store in China and abroad. The app developer community has grown to over 4.4 million in Greater China, experiencing a 76 percent increase from two years ago, Apple announced ahead of WWDC21.

"Apple has witnessed a surge in Chinese developers of the Apple Developer Program which provides cutting-edge Apple technologies for creating engaging apps and the unique opportunity to make their apps global hits," the company said. Enditem

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